Galactic Grocery
by Comfysockz
Summary: After the disaster that was Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren was fired from his job and thrown to the harsh reality of adult responsibilites. Kylo finally finds a job at a local grocery store, where the closest thing to a battle is cleaning the bathroom stalls. Will khakis be the end of him, or will he realize that black isn't the only color that goes with everything?


The slightly broken plastic lawn chair that Kylo Ren found himself in squeaked anytime he moved. He'd been sitting in this manager's office for a long time now, but just as he thought that he'd lost the job, the balding, bumbling, Brian waddled back into the room with a new stack of papers. Brian took Kylo's resume and placed it in a long row of files on his desk, and slowly sat down in his rolly chair. Through his gold rimmed glasses he looked at him and grinned, his thick brown mustache covering his lips.

"Well, Mr. Ren," he said, his timid voice stumbling a bit. "I spoke with my floor manager, Ashley, and she says that she agrees with me on the hire. You'd be perfect here, I do believe! The Galactic Grocery family welcomes you with open arms!"

Kylo blinked, shocked that he'd finally found a place that would hire him. "Oh my God, really?" he asked, leaning forward in his squeaky seat. "You mean, I'm hired? You're hiring me?"

Brian laughed at his excitement. "Yes, sir-ree-dog! We just need you to sign a few things, and then I can get you started with our training video! Oh boy!"

He reached for the stack of papers and took a pen from a plastic cup on his desk. Quickly signing on all the dotted lines, Kylo handed them back to his new boss. "I can't believe this is happening." he exclaimed, managing a smile of pure relief. "Even after reading my job history, you're still hiring me. Incredible!"

Brian suddenly stopped grinning, his garden gnome face becoming as serious as it could muster. "Well, that is something that I wanted to ask you about." He folded his hands together over his paperwork and sighed. "What exactly did you do to get fired from your last job? It was with the First Order, wasn't it?"

Kylo's heart stopped beating in his chest. Inwardly he berated himself for even bringing that up- he was in the clear, damn it! He could see the light at the end of the tunnel! Kylo swallowed and said, "Well, um, you've heard about the Starkiller explosion, right? It was all over the news. Still is really. Um." He looked at the manager and tried to laugh, but an awkward chortle is all that came out. He looked at the floor. "Well, I was kind of there when it happened, but I didn't reeeallyyy doooo annyythhiiinngg aaaboouutt iiiittt?"

Brian gave him a quizzical look, unsure of what to make of him. "What do you mean, you were _kind of_ there?"

Kylo began twiddling his thumbs. "Well, I mean, I was there, I was definitely there, but like, I was kind of... um... killing my own dad at the time?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Good Lord that sounds horrible on a resume."

Eyes wide, Brian sat back further in his chair, but didn't say anything. After a few moments, he cleared his throat and said, "I mean, there have been some times where the old man was drivin' me nuts but, I don't really think killing him would be in the cards for me really..." He sighed and looked away in awkward silence. "Nope. Not my cup of tea to uh, kill my own father... Nope."

For the next few seconds the two of them sat there in silence, the sound of the clock and the cash registers outside the only things keeping them from total quiet. Kylo's heart pounded in his chest as he wondered if he still had a job.

Suddenly, Brian practically shouted, "Good thing you're in the Star Wars universe! Or else that stuff would not fly! Nuh uh! No way Jose!" The chubby man began to laugh as if nothing had happened. "Yeah, we've decided to look past that part. We've given it some thought, and really you aren't that bad when compared to some of our old employees. That Boba Fett guy, holy moley, was I ever glad to get rid of him. Kept stealin' all of the propane tanks for that ratty jetpack of his. I mean sure, the bounty hunter racket's always full of ups and downs, and the guy needed a second job. Who were we to turn him down? Otherwise he'd probably have killed me and hung me over the fireplace!"

Kylo blinked again, half of what he'd just said failing to register in his nervous mind. "Uh, right."

Brian turned to his computer and typed in a few things before clicking on his mouse. From the printer next to him shot out a white name badge with **Kylo Ren** in bold comic sans. He handed it to him and said, "This is your badge, so don't lose it, whatever you do. On the back there's a bar code for opening and closing the store." He took a sip of his coffee. "How many pairs of khakis do you have? You might want to head down to the K-mart once you leave and pick up some Dickies. That's where Connie finds all my dress pants. She's good at that sort of thing."

"Sure," said Kylo, taking the name tag and hooking it to his tunic.

Brian stood up from his chair and adjusted his pants, tugging at his brown leather belt that held them up right under his gut. His tucked in burgundy polo had his name sewed into it in gold lettering, and under it was the word "Manager". There was a small orange stain that looked like Cheeto dust under his left man boob, but other than that everything about him was spick and span, like some sort of chunky grocery store commandant. He smiled at Kylo and asked, "What size shirt do you wear, son? I'll give you a couple of polos and one of those zip-up jackets if we still got one in your size."

Kylo stood up to follow him and said, "Extra large. But if you only have larges that's probably fine. It'll just be really tight; it might distract people, honestly. If I flex or something, or like, pick up a really heavy object that's so heavy I'm the only one that could pick it up, I might accidently just rip it completely open with my biceps. Like, my arms are throbbing, like, all the time basically. It happens a lot."

"Oh, well we wouldn't want that," replied Brian, leading the way to the supply closet. "Ya know, back in my football days I looked a little bit like you. You wouldn't think it by looking at me now but I could throw a football like nobody's business."

As the two of them entered the little room, Kylo said, "I don't know much about football. My dad wasn't into sports." He cleared his throat. "He was mostly just into being a judgemental white dick. Just because you have one wookie friend doesn't make you cool and _diverse_. Whatever."

Brian bent down to a box labeled XL and picked out 3 polo shirts, each one the same dull ketchup color. "Here's some shirts. Sorry about the monograms on the front, though. Gloria was a huge help around here before her heart attack." He picked up the box and from the floor grabbed a somewhat folded black zip-up hoodie. "Here's the jacket. They're great in the winter, or if you're loading the meat counter."

Kylo Ren grabbed the pieces of his uniform and asked, "So with these I need to wear khakis with a belt, right? What about shoes?"

"You can wear whatever shoes you want as long as they're tennis shoes. We don't need to scuff the floors around here, and besides, you'll be on your feet all day anyway." He turned the light off and started to leave. "And if you're one of those kids who are really into self expression, yes, you can wear those, oh, what are they... _Vans_ if you want. Just not the light-up ones. Those are just plain annoying."

"Alright." The two of them made their way into the store and watched as people were helping to ring people up. "But what about my lightsaber? I mean, I made it myself, and it's totally cool."

Brian turned to him. "Well, this is an open-carry state, so I'm going to have to say yes to the lightsaber. Just keep it in a holster there; no need to scare the customers."

At one of the registers, a girl with dark brown hair tied up into two pigtails was printing out a customer's receipt. She was wearing her jacket, but had pushed the sleeves up to her elbows. When she saw the two of them looking at her, she left the register after the customer had gone and came over to them. She stuck out her hand and introduced herself. "I'm Rachel. Are you the new guy that Ashley was talking about?"

Kylo swallowed at the approaching hot girl (who was probably into My Chemical Romance) and shook her hand. "Uh, yeah. The name's Ren. Kylo Ren." He winked at her and said, "I'm a Star Wars villain."

Brian laughed at him. "Out of work Star Wars villain now, buddy."

Kylo flashed him a look, but turned back around to face Rachel. She rolled her eyes at her manager and groaned, "I thought that you were through hiring these guys. You know they'll just steal all the Draino to make meth out of it." She looked at Kylo Ren and said, "Sorry, but that's happened three times since I started working here."

"And when was that?" asked Kylo.

"Last week," she said. Rachel faced Brian again and crossed her arms. "How do we know we can trust this guy? ...No offense."

Suddenly, a tan guy wearing a sun visor and Oakley sunglasses came in with the buggies and said, "Because, just look at this guy! He's approachably handsome with good hair. A villain is someone who has microwave face because his lightning bolts were fired back at him by a cool black guy! This guy just looks like a male stripper who specializes as the fire fighter! He isn't a threat!"

Brian laughed at him and shouted, "That's what I thought, too, Jeremy!"

Jeremy took off his sun visor for a second to fix his shoulder length blonde hair and gave his manager a high five. "See, Rachel, you don't have anything to worry about. You're always so paranoid about lame shit." He chomped on his gum with his big white teeth and looked at Kylo. "Anyways, nice to meetcha man, I'm Jeremy. You go to Tech?"

Kylo shook his head. "No, do you?"

Jeremy laughed and chomped his gum and shouted, "Do I go to Tech? Do I _go_ to Tech?" He flipped around and took off his shirt, Rachel and Brian rolling their eyes at how frequently he did this exact same thing. On his tan back was a huge tattoo of the greek letters of his fraternity. Out of nowhere he howled, "ALPHA KAPPA LAMBDA BABY! WOO!"

From behind the bread aisle, the floor manager Ashley leaned over and shouted, "Shut up, Jeremy!"

After he put his polo back on, Jeremy turned to Kylo and said, "The truth and the word, brother. The truth and the word." Getting back to work, he put his earbuds back in and walked back outside to the parking lot.

Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose and mumbled, "I think those shorts are smaller than his attention span." She looked up at Kylo. "Look, we might seem like a bunch of creeps, but I think you'll do fine here. I can teach you how to work the register if you need any help. Other than that it's just a bunch of restocking and coupons. You'll get a hang of things soon enough."

Brian slapped his back in agreement. "That's right, son. Just don't forget those khakis when you come in tomorrow. Tan is the universal color of the blue-collared man!" He smiled. "Tomorrow's going to be so exciting. You'll get to watch our training video, and I can explain our 20% employee discount on meat and cheese!"

 **This is just something that I thought up while I was watching Rick and Morty? This is just going to be a short little comedy? bit, since I'm working on a huge story on here right now for Star Wars called "Ghosts Handmade". Check it out if you enjoyed this teeny tiny chapter!**

 **\- Molly**


End file.
